


Hope Springs Eternal

by NonPlayerCharacter



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-08-02
Updated: 2011-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-22 03:44:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/233383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NonPlayerCharacter/pseuds/NonPlayerCharacter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite your role as the Prince of Hope, you’ve never really considered the implications of that saying.</p><p>“Uniquely qualified to recognize when all Hope is lost,” you said. You were wrong about that. You were wrong about a lot of things, really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. From Candle-Flame to Bonfire

**Author's Note:**

> Look at me! Did I really just write a story about Eridan?! Check for the seas turning to blood and the moon turning black, next.

Sollux hits the wall with a meaty thud, and you don’t even bother to suppress the surge of glee that washes over you. You learned a long time ago that life’s a beach, hot, dry, and hateful, and it’s about time that Four-Eyes learned it, too. Feferi glances back at him, then whirls on you, face set in a grimace of rage, terror and desperation (but mostly rage). She grips her Culling Fork and rushes at you.

You raise your wand hand, summoning the power of Hope through your vast knowledge of White Science and giving her one last chance to back off. Even as you scowl menacingly at her, part of you marvels at how easy it was. All this power had lain within your reach, and you had ignored it for the entire game to run around with a silly toy of a weapon. Earlier, the piss-blooded Mage had slapped you down like shark batting aside a minnow, and now you had returned the favor without even trying. Well, whatever. There’ll be plenty of time to ponder everything once you’ve teamed up with Jack.

Right now, though, you need to deal with your ex-moirail. Doesn’t look like she’s going to give you a choice but to make her pay for her treasonous crimes against her own nobility (and, of course, yours).

 _No._

It’s a small thing: the suggestion of the shadow of a whisper. In many worlds, you neither hear it nor heed it, but for our purposes, we will ignore those worlds for now. Even in this particular outlier on the bell curve of perceptiveness and suggestibility, you only barely catch it, and only at the last moment decide to pay it any mind. You twitch your wand slightly, adjusting your aim so that the bolt of power glances off of her Culling Fork, hurling her backwards to land by Sollux. She lands a little bit more gently than he did, but still lets out a yelp of pain as her head knocks heavily against a computer monitor. You watch her for a moment, but she looks dazed enough that you figure you can turn your back on her, at least for now.

You spin on your heels, only to find Kanaya staring at you with a mixture of shock and quickly-growing anger. Damn. She had been pretty tolerable, for a dust-scraping land dweller. Still, she might try to stop you. You can’t let her do that.

 _Let her go, Prince._

It comes again, more noticeable, now, but still quite quiet. You hesitate for a moment, then jab the wand in her direction threateningly. “Out a my wway, Kan. I don’t wwant to hurt you,” you snarl, as convincingly as you can manage.

She doesn’t move back, and her hand remains tightly curled around her lipstick. You’re halfway to blasting her and calling it done when you remember her mention of the Matriorb. You force yourself to relax a bit, gesture towards the Matriorb and say, “Look, Kan. You havve more important things to wworry about, right?” The moment she glances down, you blow a hole in the paneling a few inches away from the Matriorb, sending it tumbling away from her. She dives after it, and you take the opportunity to dart through the trasportalizer before anyone’s the wiser.

 _This way, sweet Prince. This way._

You run through the cavernous hallways of the Lab, not exactly sure where you’re going, but somehow certain that it’s extremely important that you get there. In the distance, you hear some yelling, which you seem to be heading towards. To your annoyance, it’s getting darker, as though someone had purposefully damaged the lighting, You raise your wand to provide a little bit of illumination as you skid around a corner and then dash down another hallway.

You see something arc through the air in the distance, hissing furiously. You dash closer and object’s movement stops suddenly, followed quickly by a dull snapping sound and a high-pitched shriek of pain. “Nothing left for you,” someone says, speaking very quietly then suddenly roaring at the top of their voice, “EXCEPT FOR MY MOTHERFUCKING MIRACLES!”

 _No, there is always Hope._

Without thinking, you lash out with your wand. Burning white light instantly fills the gap between you and your target, punching through its midsection. Indigo splatters across the floor and what you finally make out to be Nepeta, gripped tightly in one of ... it couldn’t be .... no, it is ... one of Gamzee’s hands. The Bard of Rage looks down at his chest in vague surprise for a moment, then tosses aside his former quarry and runs at you, terrifyingly fast despite the gaping wound.

You take a full half-second to aim and let loose with another blast. This one catches him right in the throat. That, he can’t ignore. He topples to the ground in two very differently sized pieces, the top one bouncing to a stop few feet away from you.

 _Well done, Prince._

“There is alwways hope,” you repeat quietly. These aren’t your thoughts, but they seem very ... right.

Yes, there is always hope. You’re very sure of that. You glance towards the crumpled heap of Nepeta some distance away and feel a flash of surprisingly genuine pity. You wonder for a moment if the foreign thoughts will drive you on, immediately, or if they’ll give you a chance to do something for her.

 _Go ahead, Prince. Give her some Hope, but do so quickly._

You vaguely realize that the foreign thoughts (might as well be honest and call them “voices,” really) are no longer coming from one source, but a chorus of several. Raising your wand high, you glance around for something to help her with. Your gaze quickly comes to rest on the cracked pair of sunglasses lying next to a body which you take care not to examine too closely. You check them over, then, upon confirming that they still work, hand them to her.

“There. Use those to contact Kar. Tell him that you just saww me and I tried to hurt you, but that I ran awway. He’ll come runnin’,” you say quickly, the words fitting together in your mind even as you babble them out.

“But that’s not what-”

You cut her off. “Just do it, Nep. He’ll believe you, and he’ll come.” You hesitate for a moment, then pull your trump card. “You knoww that, deep dowwn, he cares about all a us, probably too much for a good leader. He cares about you, and he’ll help you.” You hate yourself for pulling on her strings so bluntly and clumsily, and the expression on her face only adds to your shame.

She seems about to argue, but instead says, simply, “You’re bleeding.” You glance down at yourself in confusion, then pat your face gingerly. Your hand comes away with a few small streaks of magenta on it. You glance over towards a wall section, bringing your wand closer to illuminate your reflection in the polished metal. A thin line of your noble blood trickles from your nose and the corners of each eye, tracing a series of purple tracks down your face.

Oddly, this doesn’t worry you in the slightest. Or perhaps you are simply not being allowed to feel concern about it, just like you can’t muster any discomfort about the foreign thoughts invading your mind, right now.

You take a second glance at the metal and notice that, behind the yellow of your eyes, there is a faint white glow, almost lost in the burning light emitted from the tip of your wand.

To no one in particular, you ask, “WWhat’s happinin’?”

 _You cannot hope to hold us all for long, Prince. We/you must simply hope that we can do something in our short time together._

The voices have grown from a chorus to a full-blown choir, now. You ponder why you used those particular plural nouns came to mind, and then you know why. “But I killed you,” you mumble dumbly, “all a you.” Nepeta stares up at you in fascinated silence, then calls after you uncertainly as you first walk, then run away from her huddled form.

 _You/we never killed any of us/you. We/you allowed you/us to gather us/you into yourself/ourself._

You run and run, finding your way through the twisting labyrinth of the Lab as though it were your own hive of ten sweeps. Before you realize where you’re going, you find yourself facing a door.

 _And now, Prince, you must make your choice._

Reality crashes down on you like a tidal wave. Your head hurts beyond imagining, your legs ache from minutes of sprinting at top speed, your eyes burn and itch with a vengeance. Life is pain and everything hurts.

 _You may return to your former allies, bereft of our power, and hope for clemency for your crimes. Or you may face the demon above Skaia and hope that your power will be enough._

“WWhat glubbin’ kind a choice is that?” you whine, clutching your head. “Either I go back and get killed for bein’ stupid, or I go forwward and get killed for bein’ stupid.”

 _It is a Prince’s choice: to live and die ignobly in exile and humiliation, or to die gloriously defending a dream he will never achieve._

You stare at the door for a moment, and the faces of your former teammates flashes in front of your eyes: Karkat, berating you; Sollux, casually turning you away; Feferi, snarling in rage over your treatment of the piss-blooded peasant; Kanaya, quietly mocking you behind a façade of politeness. Why should you risk yourself for them?

And yet, what reason do you have to go back? To try and negotiate with an insane, abdicated Empress and a grey-garbed asshole? Glub that.

You reach out for the door and, hand shaking, pull it open. Everything turns white, and you are gone.

\---

 _With a shout, They rise up, brighter than the sun and more fierce. Already, the Demon is before Them, summoning the Green Miles to destroy Them and Their wards. But They are Hope-Of-War, both Battle-Lord and Battle-Host, and with a wave of Their hand and the wrath of ten thousand angels, They turn aside the assault._

 _They surge forward, the roar of Their battle hymn drowning out the whispered songs of the Gods of the Furthest Ring and shaking distant Skaia to its core._

A Seer ceases her investigations, dropping to her knees and pressing her hands over her hears in a futile attempt to keep the shattering melody out of her head. She does not even notice the streaks of teal dribbling down her cheeks as she curls into a ball and raises her own voice against it, to no avail. It’s so, so loud, and she cannot bear it.

 _The Demon darts away on his ebony wings, vanishing into the Green Sun’s embrace for a moment and then reappearing behind Them. He drives his sword through Their chest, only to find a single angel impaled on its point, thrashing weakly. Furious at this trick, he tears the creature to pieces with his teeth, splashing himself with its silvery-white blood._

A Knight feels an odd tug of arcane sympathy as he tends to the injured Rogue and attempts to clean up the casualties from his ally’s betrayal. Never one for introspection, he quickly lets it slip away.

 _As the Demon vents his rage, They summon Their own fire, becoming Hope-In-Seeking, piercing and unescapable. The Demon raises his guard, and the Green Sun and Silver Dawn clash for a moment, illuminating even the darkest reaches of the Incipisphere with blinding green and white._

A Thief, perched on the edge of an abyss, suddenly twinges with loss, as though she had missed a great prize without even knowing its existence. She hesitates in her communication, before the worried queries of an Heir drags her back to reality.

 _The Demon tumbles, stunned at the true power of the challenge offered by his opponent. However, he quickly recovers and charges Them again. Faster than thought, They become Hope-In-Waiting, hidden and unassailable, and vanish._

A Sylph feels the world twist ever-so-slightly in the distance, and braces herself for death. When it does not come, she relaxes and hurries after the Knight, helping him with his burden.

 _Confused, the Demon whirls and twists, searching for his foe and his prey. When he fails to locate Them by eye or ear or nose, he turns back to the hateful grey lump floating below him and raises his ringed hand to wipe it from existence. A fierce blow catches him from behind, and he whirls towards its source. They stand before him as Hope Ascendant, unafraid and too brilliant for even him to behold._

A Witch watches over her lover, cradling his bloodied head in her lap. In a moment, his eyes flicker open, revealing empty, sightless sockets. Below her, the Mage laughs gently to himself, knowing that the Doom is lifted, and that he is now free of his enemy.

 _Blindly, the Demon strikes at Them, howling in triumph as he feels his sword strike home. No angelic facsimile comes to take Their place, this time. Instead, They wrap Their arms around him tightly, and become Hope-In-Despair, desperate and burning-hot. The Demon’s cry turns from victory to agony as his fur burns and his skin peels. He thrashes as meat fries and fat bubbles and tries to reach out for the Green Sun’s power to escape, but it does not come._

 _In the end, only ashes remain, a pointless memorial floating, unnoticed, in the darkness of the doomed Incipisphere._

 _And yet, Hope springs eternal._

\---

 _Who are you?_

I am no one.

 _What is your name?_

I have no name, no symbol.

 _What color do you bleed?_

I have no blood, no ancestor.

 _What do you have?_

Nothing. Peace.

 _You have Hope._

I do not want it. Take it from me.

 _We cannot, Prince. That is your burden to bear._

\---

Your eyes snap open, only for you to squeeze them shut again as light sears them agonizingly. “He’s awake!” chirps a voice that, while familiar, you cannot quite place.

“About goddam time, too. I still can’t believe that he pulled it off.”

“Nithe going, you thtupid bathtard.” Something nudges your sharply in the side and you groan, trying to roll away from it until a jolt of pain arrests you. “Why didn’t you jutht tell uth your planth in the firtht plathe?”

You mumble incoherently (attempting something along the lines of “What?” and failing miserably), and slowly prize your eyes open, squinting against the burning light. You stare at the flock of faces floating above you. Eventually, once you work out the position of your teeth and tongue, you ask the single question that lurks in your skull.

“I ... I’m sorry. Do I know you?”


	2. Making Things Better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Or, at least, keeping them from getting any worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looks like the body politic wins out here, folks. Much to my surprise, I found several ideas bubbling up for more on this divergent timeline. This particular section is more of an interlude than anything else, but I wanted to set the scene a _little_ bit, at least, to make the next few chapters a bit more understandable.
> 
> Hope everyone enjoys this!

**> Terezi: Wake**

Urrrrggg. Do you have to?

...

Okay, fine.

You are now Terezi Pyrope and you are awake.

You are also in a lot of pain.

Mainly, your head is yelling at you for something that is eminently not your fault. Something that you are not going to think about, because when you think about The Song, you catch echoes of it-

You spend the next several minutes whimpering in pain as echoes of The Song, quiet and gentle compared to The Song itself, but still brutally loud, bounce around the inside of your head like Gamzee on a single-peg bouncing device.

 **> Terezi: Surely you must be investigating by now.**

Investigating? You were investigating something?

...

Oh, right.

Tavros.

 **> Terezi: Get up.**

Sure. You’ll get right on that.

...

Any minute now ...

...

So maybe if you roll over and ...

...

Nope, that hurts too. You’re just gonna take a break for a few moments.

...

You should probably try again soon. Maybe if you brace your hand here and your shoulder there and ...

...

Okay, apparently you no longer have an equilibrium. Also: ow.

Upon reevaluation of your position, you’ve decided that you’re just going to lay here until you die.

“Weeeeeeeell, look who’s being a lazy grub.”

Which, apparently, may not be very long at all.

\---

 **> Karkat: Fume**

Eridan grub-fucking nook-sniffing shit-eating Ampora. May whatever gods, demons or other entities of questionable intent that exist curse his miserable hide with a blight heretofore unimagined in the minds of even the most perverse and cruel trolls.

The asshole had blinded Sollux, knocked the shit out of Feferi, almost destroyed the matriorb, killed Gamzee for attacking Nepeta (that one still sorta throws you for a loop, but she sure as hell hadn’t asphyxiated Equius and broken her arm by herself) and then straight-up disappeared. You had hoped that he wouldn’t come back, only for Kanaya to report that she had found him on one of the uppermost levels of labs, unconscious, cut and burned all over (though, it turned out, relatively superficially), and wrapped in some sort of odd, white shroud.

So you hauled him down to the computer room, and left Nepeta to watch him, since she couldn’t exactly help clean up the place, right now. Naturally, you had stayed close, in case he decided to follow in Gamzee’s footsteps when he woke up, and had come running when she reported him stirring.

And then he played the “golly gee who are all you nice folks and what am I doing here” card. You’d seen it done better before in movies, but when you told him exactly that, he just boggled at you idiotically and asked if he had done something wrong. The answer, of course, was and is yes, but he wouldn’t be moving for a while, at least (unless he was faking, a possibility that you had already considered, discarded, and re-considered a half-dozen times in the last few minutes).

In fact, you’re considering that possibility again when, over the grumble and flow of the conversation, you hear him speak up again, for only the third time after waking up. “Aren’t we missing somebody?” he asks, his tone perfectly innocent.

“Of course we are,” you snap back, “I haven’t heard from Tavros, Vriska or Terezi in almost an ... hour ...” You trail off as the implications of your own sentence hit you.

Tavros and _Vriska_ missing.

Vriska and _Terezi_ missing.

For nearly an hour.

Oh fuck.

 **> Karkat Flip the fuck out.**

What? No. You flipped out exactly once, when Eridan ran off. You have filled your flipping quota for the rest of the perigee, perhaps for the rest of the sweep. There will be absolutely no flipping out from you.

 **> Karkat: Order people around.**

You can totally do that.

“Unfortunately, Eridan has a point. Kanaya, I want you with me, we’re going to go find out if anyone else is alive out there. Feferi, as the only other able-bodied troll here, I want you to guard Sollux, Nepeta and Eridan in case anyone else decides to board the murder train. Block the transportalizer from this side until I, personally, message you and give the all-clear. Nepeta, I’ll need ...” For the second time in half as many minutes, the sentence dies in your throat. Despite your rather ... mixed opinions about your team’s Rogue, the look on her face as she comprehends what you want from her drives a little barbed spike through your expanding and contracting circulatory muscle.

Before you can either decide to backpedal and formulate a new plan or push on and ignore her look of complete, devastated misery, she pulls her moirail’s cracked glasses off of her face and hands them to you. “I understand,” she says. “Take them.”

Arg. Goddammit. Stupid selfless, badly traumatized Nepeta giving up her glasses freely and looking so pathetic. Stupid you being unable to process anything without idiotic, unnecessary, pejorative adjectives and the occasional shitty explicative.

You slip the glasses on and log onto your Trollian account, trying to ignore the smell of Equiusweat (and, you realize with a little jolt of horror and additional disgust, probably Equiublood, too) permeating the glasses. Unsurprisingly, not many people are online, nobody is, in fact, aside from Feferi (already monitoring things on one of the lab computers, as per your command) and ... Terezi.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC]

CG: TEREZI?  
CG: FUCK, YOU AREN’T THERE, ARE YOU?  
 CG: GREAT. THAT’S JUST FUCKING FANTASTIC.  
CG: WELL, WHATEVER, I JUST HOPE GAMZEE DIDN’T KILL YOU, OR WHATEVER.  
CG: I’LL  
CG: I’LL TALK TO YOU LATER.  
CG: LET ME KNOW IF YOU GET THIS MESSAGE, OKAY?

carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased trolling gallowsCalibrator [GC]

Well, that certainly didn’t get you anywhere. Honestly, you aren’t really sure why you bothered. She hadn’t contacted you thus far, and while she might be one to wander off randomly (run off after accidentally engineering some douchebag’s death, whatever), surely she’d have recovered and contacted you by now if she was okay. Obviously something must be wrong.

Before you can second guess your own logic again or do anything else stupid, you nod significantly towards Kanaya and step onto the transportalizer.

 **> Kanaya: Follow**

You exit the transportalizer just in time to catch Karkat flipping out.

You don’t get everything: he rushes forwards, screaming obscenities and threats of the finest vintage, swinging his sickles in a whirl of furious, slicing death. Then, with a little flicker of light, his target sticks out her leg and with a surprised “FUCK!” he slams to the floor, head snapping back and brilliantly red blood splattering from what must be a broken set of olfactory canals.

“Oh come oooooooon, Karkat. You didn’t honestly expect that to work, did you?” Vriska says, and now that the moment of violence has ended, you finally have a chance to see what’s what.

Vriska stands almost casually, just far enough away from Karkat to avoid any nasty surprises if he decides to get up suddenly. In her right hand, the Octet glows a cool, threatening azure. Over her left shoulder, Terezi hangs like a deflated balloon, limp and unmoving. It takes you a moment, but you spot what drove Karkat into his frenzy: there are teal streaks down the front of Vriska’s god tier robe. Lots of them.

She starts towards you, her pace easy and calm, but stops again as you draw your lipstick from your Strife Specibus. “Not you too, Fussyfangs,” she says. “Really, I swear that I just want someone to take her off my hands and maybe check if she’s in any danger of bleeding to death.” You hesitate, and she rolls her eyes, continuing. “Look, I didn’t do any of this to her. As I tried to explain to the angry midget here, I heard her screaming really loudly from like, I dunno, eight hundred yards away and decided to go help her.”

You raise one eyebrow skeptically, and she sighs, her face assuming an over-dramatic frown. “Okay, so maybe I didn’t decide that allllllll on my own, but even if I did get some encouragement, I helped her, and that’s what counts!” She doesn’t say it, but you can hear the anxious “isn’t it?” after the end of her bold declaration.

Behind her, Karkat starts getting to his feet, and she lets the dice slip from her fingers before you can react properly. The bounce a few times (and you’d almost swear that one actually shifts after it’s finished bouncing) and then flare with light for a moment. You begin shifting your lipstick into its more dangerous form when a massive, blue, plush ... cuttlefish (of some sort? Maybe?) materializes over Karkat while he’s still on all fours and pins him to the ground with a soft thump (and a muffled scream of “GODDAMMIT!”). Despite yourself, you have to fight back a giggle at the sheer bizarreness of her “attack.”

Still, it works like a charm, leaving only Karkat’s head and one flailing arm exposed to indicate continued existence. He curses at her and the plush tentacle-thing, twisting and turning in a fruitless attempt to wriggle free. “Oh settle down,” she calls over her shoulder, “I’ll let you out once you stop trying to kill me.” She turns back to you and cants one eyebrow quizzically, mirroring your earlier expression. “Well, Kanaya? What’ll it be?”

 **> Kanaya: Assist**

You hesitate a second longer, then, still a little cautious, approach her to receive Terezi’s limp body.

“Finally!” she says, dumping the other troll into your arms carelessly. “I knew I could count on you, Fussyfangs!” She twirls back towards Karkat, her voice exultant. “Now then, have you had enough time under the timeout squiddle, fearless leader, or do you need more of its punitive cuddling?!”

Karkat snarls something back at her, but you ignore their bantering for a few moments to check over Terezi. Much to your surprise, she has almost no visible wounds, aside from a small gash in her forehead and a split lip. Indeed, most of the teal streaking her face and staining her shirt is far too pale to be blood. Well, at least you probably won’t have to worry about her dying of blood loss, as Vriska had suggested. Still, the idea of Terezi crying enough to not only cover her face, but get all over her shirt and Vriska’s worries you. You can’t begin to imagine what happened to her.

You hear a defeated grumble from Karkat, and glance up to see Vriska hauling him out from under the ridiculously large plush toy, which vanishes a split second later. At your prompting, he quickly contacts Feferi and then gives you the go ahead to head up with Terezi.

As soon as you set Terezi down on the lab floor, however, he moves to her side, hovering and worrying.

 **> Kanaya: Attempt to keep it together.**

Your attempt is an admirable success.

In fact, across the next several hours, everyone except you and Sollux fails at keeping it together.

Nepeta goes first, less than an hour after the group re-unites (excepting Tavros, but you don’t find out about him until a little later), when the shock finally wears off and the true enormity of what she has lost really hits her. Karkat manages to pry himself away from Terezi for a few minutes, and does a surprisingly good job of comforting her, but he really only mitigates the damage.

The next wave comes with Terezi’s reawakening and her explanation of what, exactly Vriska and Eridan had done. This gets pretty much everyone, for different reasons. You have to talk down Karkat, Feferi and Vriska from killing each other right there in the lab. Once that succeeds, Terezi gets furious that “JUST1C3 1S B31NG D3N13D” and actually manages to take a few unsteady swipes at Vriska before collapsing again. All the while, Eridan flips out over everyone almost getting murder-happy over events he can’t even begin to understand, requiring repeated assurances from everyone that nobody will be killing anybody else in the immediate future before he calms down again.

After that little spat of madness, you refuse to go to sleep until everyone else has already settled down into their respective piles (except, of course, Karkat, who stays on a lab computer, arranging things with the humans endlessly). Even then, you have to stay up a little longer to alchemize a cloth pile for Eridan, as he can’t remember if or where he ever had somewhere to sleep. By the time you finally head into your room, lock the transportalizer from the inside and switch into a more suitable sleeping garment, you can barely stand. You practically collapse into your pile and fall asleep moments later.

\---

 **> Skip to the end/beginning.**

 _Lucky, lucky, lucky thirteen, meeting under the impotent emerald fury of a dying sun._

 _A murderous traitor embraces an innocent king through whose grace she still draws breath._

 _A pair of witches and a mage (not quite a proper coven, but close enough in a pinch like this) babble cheerfully (again, two out of three: the mage doesn’t speak too much), brewing plans in the cauldron of their collective minds._

 _A champion endures the attentions of a cackling madwoman while his sister advises a scowling tyrant._

 _A god in red and two mortals in green chat idly, all quietly desiring someone else._

 _And, to the side, their savior smiles guilelessly, knowing little but understanding just enough._


End file.
